PARSIPPANY — The Parsippany school board has found a way to circumvent Gov. Chris Christie’s superintendent salary cap.

The cap, put in place earlier this year to protect taxpayers, limited a superintendent’s salary to $175,000. Parsippany had awarded Superintendent LeRoy Seitz a five-year contract that would have paid him $220,585 in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Morris County Executive County Superintendent Kathleen Serafino ordered the district to rescind the contract and refused to approve the budget.

The district stood firm, and now says Serafino has dropped the order to rescind.

The amended budget, which was approved by the board at an emergency meeting at 8 a.m. today, does not effectively change what Seitz will earn, nor does it change the tax levy. Instead, it simply moved the money into another column.

“We’re just moving a couple dollars from one line item to another,” said Anthony Mancuso, board president. “That’s all it is.”

The new budget has a salary line for Seitz of $204,125, which includes base pay of $175,000, a $2,500 stipend because the district has two high schools, and it assumes Seitz will earn a 15 percent merit bonus. That all conforms to the state’s new salary cap for superintendents.

An additional $16,000 will be moved into a miscellaneous fund that will be awarded to Seitz if the school district wins its lawsuit against the Department of Education and is able to uphold its original contract.

If the state wins the suit, Seitz could sue the district for breach of contract.